The Emperor Of The Moon
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The Emperor Of The Moon
''The Emperor of the Moon'' is a Restoration farce written by Aphra Behn in 1687, based on Italian commedia dell'arte. It was Behn's second most successful play (after '' The Rover''), probably due to the lightness of the plot and its accompanying musical and spectacular entertainment. The music is largely lost today. The play was not fitted out like a big opera, because producers were unwilling to finance a costly opera following the failure of Dryden's ''Albion and Albanius''. The plan was to make audiences come back to the playhouse and attend an affordable mini-spectacle like ''The Emperor of the Moon''. It was first staged at the Dorset Garden Theatre by the United Company. The original cast included Cave Underhill as Dr Baliardo, Anthony Leigh as Scaramouch, Thomas Jevon as Harlequin, Sarah Cooke as Elvira and Katherine Corey as Mopsophil.Van Lennep, W. ''The London Stage, 1660-1800: Volume One, 1660-1700''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960. p.356 Plot Dr. Ba ...
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Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming p ...
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Thomas Jevon
Thomas Jevon (1652–1688) was an English playwright, and one of the first English Harlequins. He began his career as a dancing master, but worked his way onto the stage, and played leading low-comedy parts in London between 1673 and 1688. His brother-in-law was the English playwright and poet laureate Thomas Shadwell. Jevon's only published play, the farce '' The Devil of a Wife, or, a Comical Transformation'' (with a plot borrowed from a Philip Sidney story, and possibly some assistance from Shadwell), was performed in 1686 at Dorset Garden, where Jevon usually acted. Jevon and George Powell played the two leading roles, and the piece achieved great success. Various versions with added music appeared later, and Charles Coffey Charles Coffey (late 17th century – 13 May 1745) was an Irish playwright, opera librettist and arranger of music from Westmeath. Following the initial failure of his ballad opera '' The Beggar’s Wedding'' (Dublin, Smock Alley Theatre, 24 Ma ... us ...
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1687 Plays
Events January–March * January 3 – With the end of latest of the Savoyard–Waldensian wars in the Duchy of Savoy between the Savoyard government and Protestant Italians known as the Waldensians, Victor Amadeus III, Duke of Savoy, carries out the release of 3,847 surviving prisoners and their families, who had forcibly been converted to Catholicism, and permits the group to emigrate to Switzerland. * January 8 – Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed as the last Lord Deputy of Ireland by the English crown, and begins efforts to include more Roman Catholic Irishmen in the administration. Upon the removal of King James II in England and Scotland, the Earl of Tyrconnell loses his job and is replaced by James, who reigns briefly as King of Ireland until William III establishes his rule over the isle. * January 27 – In one of the most sensational cases in England in the 17th century, midwife Mary Hobry murders her abusive husband, De ...
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Plays By Aphra Behn
Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * Play Mobile, a Polish internet provider * Xperia Play, an Android phone * Rakuten.co.uk (formerly Play.com), an online retailer * Backlash (engineering), or ''play'', non-reversible part of movement * Petroleum play, oil fields with same geological circumstances * Play symbol, in media control devices Film * ''Play'' (2005 film), Chilean film directed by Alicia Scherson * ''Play'', a 2009 short film directed by David Kaplan * ''Play'' (2011 film), a Swedish film directed by Ruben Östlund * ''Rush'' (2012 film), an Indian film earlier titled ''Play'' and also known as ''Raftaar 24 x 7'' * ''The Play'' (film), a 2013 Bengali film Literature and publications * ''Play'' (play), written by Samuel Beckett * ''Play'' (''The New York Times'' ...
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James II Of England
James VII and II (14 October 1633 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His reign is now remembered primarily for conflicts over religious tolerance, but it also involved struggles over the principles of absolutism and the divine right of kings. His deposition ended a century of political and civil strife in England by confirming the primacy of the English Parliament over the Crown. James succeeded to the thrones of England, Ireland, and Scotland following the death of his brother with widespread support in all three countries, largely because the principles of eligibility based on divine right and birth were widely accepted. Tolerance of his personal Catholicism did not extend to tolerance of Catholicism in general, an ...
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Exclusion Crisis
The Exclusion Crisis ran from 1679 until 1681 in the reign of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. Three Exclusion bills sought to exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. None became law. Two new parties formed. The Tories were opposed to this exclusion while the "Country Party", who were soon to be called the Whigs, supported it. While the matter of James's exclusion was not decided in Parliament during Charles's reign, it would come to a head only three years after James took the throne, when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Finally, the Act of Settlement 1701 decided definitively that Catholics were to be excluded from the English, Scottish and Irish thrones, now the British throne. Background In 1673, when he refused to take the oath prescribed by the new Test Act, it became publicly known that the Duke of York was a Roman Cathol ...
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Whigs (British Political Party)
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the new Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s, and other Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Liberals' rival, the modern day Conservative Party, in 1912. The Whigs began as a political faction that opposed absolute monarchy and Catholic Emancipation, supporting constitutional monarchism with a parliamentary system. They played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of the Roman Catholic Stuart kings and pretenders. The period known as the Whig Supremacy (1714–1760) was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whig ...
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Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque involved music, dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Masquers who did not speak or sing were often courtiers: the English queen Anne of Denmark frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I of England performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Development The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and cou ...
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Katherine Corey
Katherine Corey ( fl. 1660 – 1692) was an English actress of the Restoration era, one of the first generation of female performers to appear on the public stage in Britain. Corey played with the King's Company and the United Company, and had one of the longest careers of any actress in her generation. In "The humble petition of Katherine Corey" (see below), she stated that she "was the first and is the last of all the actresses that were constituted by King Charles the Second at His Restauration." Correy started her career under her maiden name, Mitchell, but was Mrs. Corey by 1663. "Mrs Corey was a big woman with a gift for comedy. She was popular in a variety of roles, but especially in old women parts: scolding wives, mothers, governesses, waiting women, and bawds." In his Diary, Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most ...
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Sarah Cooke
Sarah Cooke (died 1688) was an English stage actress of the seventeenth century. She was a member of the King's Company, based at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. She played a number of lead roles during the 1680s. Her aunt was the governess to the maids of honour of the Duchess of York in the 1660s. After some time working in this role alongside her aunt she was discovered by the Earl of Rochester, who promoted her theatrical career. In hear early years with the King's Company she mostly appeared on tour or with the nursery company, devoted to developing new talent. It was likely during this time she was under the management of John Coysh. In 1677 she played her first known role at Drury Lane in '' The Country Innocence'' and acted for the King's Company united 1682 when the merged United Company was formed and she was frequently employed by it until her death six years later.Highfill, Burnim & Langhans p.473-75 As with many actors of the era, the full number of her roles is unkno ...
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Anthony Leigh
Anthony Leigh (died 1692) was a celebrated English comic actor. Life He was from a Northamptonshire family, and was not closely related to the actor John Leigh (c.1689–1726?). He joined the Duke of York's company about 1672, and appeared in that year at the recently opened theatre in Dorset Garden, as the original Pacheco in ''The Reformation'' (1673), a comedy ascribed by Gerard Langbaine to one Arrowsmith, a Cambridge M.A. graduate. At Dorset Garden, Leigh played many original parts. After the merger of the duke's company with the king's in 1682, Leigh did not immediately go to the Theatre Royal. He was in 1683, however, at that theatre the original Bartoline in John Crowne's ''City Politics'', and played Bessus in a revival of ''A King and No King''. Here he remained until his death, creating many characters.They included: Beaugard's Father in Otway's ''The Atheist'', Rogero in Thomas Southerne's ''The Disappointment'', Sir Paul Squelch in Richard Brome's ''Northern Lass'' ...
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